


Bleeding Slowly

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 12:25:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3728878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been another hard day at work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bleeding Slowly

When Bodie looked up, Doyle was just standing there, staring into the distance. His nose had started to bleed again, but he wasn't making any move to wipe it, and blood was welling in two nasty gouges by his eye.

"Alright mate?" he asked, reaching out to nudge his arm with the back of one wrist, wanting to get some _life_ back into him. "Good job she was a lousy aim with a two-by-four, or you'd be walking with a Labrador."

Doyle blinked, then swallowed and wiped at his nose, coming out of whatever daze he'd been in, but not looking much more alive. "She almost didn't need to be, did she? What the hell were you doing, running in like that? She could have had a shooter for all you knew! You could have been..." He didn't finish.

"She didn't though, did she?" What was the point of might-have-beens? "Otherwise it'd be both of us lying down there instead of her. Come on, Doyle - it was her own choice." Doyle had never liked the idea of him shooting women, even though they'd both done it before, and would no doubt do it again. It always made him angry.

Doyle glared at him - that was a bit better. "It's your choice I'm on about, pillock - you're supposed to shoot from the door!"

"That sounds familiar." He still remembered that, the Wimbledon op, the sickening moment when he hadn't known which way it was going to go, then Doyle's shot the split second faster, saving the day. Saving his life, again. "Maybe I was evening the score a little."

"Bodie..."

There was a look Doyle got, sometimes, that was almost too much for Bodie, because Doyle was a whirlwind of motion and energy and blood thrumming with the turn of the world. Even when he was lying down, even when he was asleep there was a life of movement in him, heartbeat and pulse and breath and every muscle alive and awaiting instructions. But this look - this look was a stillness so deep that Bodie felt he might fall right into it and never come out the other side, and Doyle never looked like that at anyone else.

He couldn't afford to fall, not so far, not so very, very far.

Not yet.

"Doyle," he replied, and then because it wasn't enough, and because _not yet_ was getting closer with every shot fired, with every miss, with every scrape of skin, he reached out with a hand and tilted Doyle's head back slightly, moving it for him, and with his other hand he found a clean handkerchief in his pocket, and began to wipe away all that blood.

 

_December 2014_


End file.
